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Cream of Tomato Soup

A tomato soup thickened with a white sauce, seasoned with salt, pepper, and optional onion, celery, garlic, or bay leaf.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Cream of Tomato Soup

Why it works: Tomato and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,377 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cream of Tomato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tomato base

  1. Stew the tomatoes with the desired flavoring for 1 hour.

  2. Strain the mixture and add baking soda while hot.

Finish and serve

  1. Make a white sauce using the butter, flour, and milk.

  2. Combine the tomato juice with the white sauce and serve hot.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  5. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the main body and tomato flavor of the soup.
Baking soda
Neutralizes some of the tomato's acidity, softening its sharpness and mellowing the flavor.
Butter
Enriches the white sauce, adding fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a white sauce that gives the soup body.
Milk
Forms the base of the white sauce, adding creaminess and mild sweetness.

The step that matters

Add baking soda while the tomato mixture is hot. Baking soda reacts with tomato acids and foams up, so it should be stirred in gradually. Adding it to cooled or rushed mixture can leave it unevenly dispersed and cause a bitter or soapy taste.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, flour, butter, pepper, milk, celery, clove):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, flour, butter, pepper, milk, celery, clove. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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